The main characteristic of an authoritarian regime is that it permits, encourages, and relies on systemic violence. The time has come to form a united front, which is the only way to defeat such a regime, Georgia’s fifth president, Salome Zurabishvili, wrote on social media.

According to Zurabishvili, “the inevitable struggle can no longer wait for the unattainable unification of political parties, and now is the time for national unity.”

“An authoritarian regime is characterized by permitting, encouraging, and relying on systemic violence.

At the same time, an authoritarian regime survives through corruption. Corruption is also permitted and encouraged by the regime itself. It serves as its source of sustenance.

A regime approaches its end when it can no longer guarantee protection and impunity to these two inseparable parts of its system.

This is what happened to the United National Movement. Let us recall the speech delivered after the prison abuse footage was made public, when Mikheil Saakashvili could neither deny nor justify what had happened.

After that, trust in the regime began to disappear even among its most loyal circles, and everyone started thinking about their own survival.

A similar sense of disappointment has spread among corrupt officials within the regime. Those who believed that, in exchange for blind loyalty, they had been given a green light for all kinds of corrupt arrangements suddenly realize that the same regime can sacrifice them without hesitation. Shocked or frightened, they watch as the regime prosecutes or abandons some of its most trusted figures - Grigol Liluashvili, Irakli Gharibashvili, Tornike Rizhvadze, and Giorgi Burchuladze.

What political and business circles associated with Georgian Dream have discovered in recent months is now spreading to the security services as well. Although punishment of law enforcement officers for violence remains superficial - a two-month detention followed by release - it is an alarming sign for them when the regime does not deny what happened, does not publicly defend them, and is prepared to sacrifice them for its own survival.

Two main conclusions can be drawn from all of this:

• The weakening of the regime’s foundations;
• Fear shifting into the ranks of Georgian Dream.

If we also consider the complete lack of trust and the breakdown of teamwork at the highest levels, all of this points to the regime moving rapidly toward its end.

Therefore, time is running out. The time has come to form a united front, which is the only way to defeat such a regime.

Everyone against one.

And ‘everyone’ means all those who care about the future and survival of this country.

This inevitable struggle can no longer wait for the unattainable unification of political parties.

It is time for national unity,” Zurabishvili wrote on social media.